Discernment: Learning to Love

Many times I've heard people say something like this regardig discerning their calling to ministry:

Oh, I didn't want to do it, but God kept at me. God was pulling me along, but I didn’t want to go, I really didn’t, but God just kept bugging me and wouldn't let me alone.

I think we need to be very careful about this kind of thinking. God is found in our resistence, too. Yes, we must learn to trust God, but we must learn to trust ourselves, too.

Discernment is not really about making a decision or solving a problem. Discernment is living a life that moves toward authenticity. It's all about learning to love ourselves~the true self, that is. It's a process of developing self awareness such that we can finally see how our deepest desire is also God's desire for us. God's will for us does not differ from our own deepest desire. And I believe that our deepest desires always come down to Love.

Most every advance in discernment carries with it a cost, the cross of self-knowledge. As we learn who we truly are, so much of who we thought we were must die, and that is often quite painful. Developing self-awareness is a waking up process, a birthing process, a movement from what is small and dark and prison-like to that which is terrifyingly enormous, vibrantly light, and freeing.

To discern we must identify the obstacles to the Image of God within us, and then take action to remove them so that we can increasingly become the authentic beings that God created. It's the imago Dei that truly knows, actually sees.

I think we can liken the process of removing the obstacles to the imago Dei within us to learning to love. Love and fear cannot stand together. Love casts out our fears and anxieties so that we can be transformed and ever more receptive to love. The more we’re receptive, the more we can change. It is in being LOVED (not loving, although that's a natural consequence of allowing ourselves to be loved) that the imago Dei is clarified, enlivened, and empowered. We are desirable because we were created by desire, God's perfect desire.

It's difficult, allowing ourselves to be completely loved. It's both passive and active--we simply allow it, we let go, surrender to this great power of love. But there's also some active discernment necessary, some real agency involved in this surrender. In my experience it doesn't just happen~we must work at it, practice listening and being receptive and trusting. Oh my. It's not easy.

And ALL this transformation is for the sole purpose of LOVE – to LOVE the world.

Just some thoughts this Thursday night.

flickr image, "inner light"